“A lot of my work to date has looked at visual thinking on cognitive assessments: If two people are solving problems on an intelligence test in completely different ways but still getting to the same solution, are there ways that we could measure that and model what’s going on in their heads?” asked Kunda, who earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“There’s evidence that at least some people diagnosed with autism, like Temple Grandin, show an unusual propensity toward visual thinking. One goal of my research is to find ways to identify these individuals and model their cognitive differences using techniques from artificial intelligence. Another goal is to develop new interactive technologies that might provide better options for education and communication for these individuals.”